buzzardsbay - Slashdot User

Comment You want to do what, now? (Score 1) 2

by buzzardsbay on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @10:33AM (#27845477) Attached to: Why Star Trek Needs Tech Support

OK, this list is a lot cooler and more thoughtful than I expected going in. Big fan of the idea of virtualization to get the ridiculously large computer core under control. But call-routing tech to put Uhura out of business? Are you high? I want technology that gets Uhura all up in my bidness as often as possible.

Submission + - Tech Companies that Won't Survive 2009 (channelinsider.com)

Submitted by

buzzardsbay

on Monday January 12, 2009 @12:26PM

buzzardsbay writes: "Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009. It's important to note that these aren't the opinions of the magazine or its editors. The list comes from folks who work in IT, mostly technology resellers, who are out in the field selling, installing and maintaining this stuff. If there were ever canaries in the tech coal mine, they'd be these service and solution providers who live and die by the slightest shift in the markets. Some of the companieson this list, like Sun and AMD, are shocking because of their size. Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising."

Submission + - Recession Pushes IT to Find New Value in Old Gear (channelinsider.com)

Submitted by

buzzardsbay

on Thursday December 18, 2008 @12:27PM

buzzardsbay writes: "Trying to put a bright spin on a gloomy subject, the folks at eWEEK unearth an emerging trend: There's a booming cottage industry of dealers in refurbished computer and networking gear serving folks on the hunt for "slightly used" and "new to you" equipment. The dealers selling the stuff tell eWEEK the equipment is paractically new, most of it less than a year old, and that the prices for things likes servers and routers are lower than they have been since the post dot-com / Sept. 11 days in 2001. Used gear isn't for everybody, obviously. Story points out that while many of these used IT dealers offer configuration services, they don't do installs, and most are not authorized resellers. They do, however, offer decent warranties, so if you can do some of the work yourself, you'll probably be OK."

Submission + - IT Workers Are Getting Fatter (channelinsider.com)

Submitted by buzzardsbay on Monday May 19, 2008 @12:17PM

buzzardsbay writes: While technologies such as virtualization, multi-threading and blade servers have made the data center leaner, those who work there are getting... well... not leaner. According to a new study by CareerBuilder.com, 34 percent of IT workers say they have gained more than ten pounds in their current jobs. A hefty 16 percent say they've gained at least twice that. That's 50 percent putting on weight. The culprits seem to be the stressful-yet-sedentary nature of tech work coupled with our famously poor eating habits. According to the survey, some 41 percent of IT workers eat out for lunch twice or more per week, making portion and calorie control difficult. A pale-looking 11 percent actually buy their lunch out of a vending machine at least once a week.

A Congressman Who Can Code Assembly 421

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 13, 2008 @05:20PM from the at-least-its-not-haskell dept.

christo writes "In what appears to be a first, the US House of Representatives now has a Congressman with coding skills. Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. Foster is a physicist who worked at Fermilab for 22 years designing data analysis software for the lab's high energy particle collision detector. In an interview with CNET today, Foster's campaign manager confirmed that the Congressman can write assembly, Fortran and Visual Basic. Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all? Can we expect more rational tech-policy? Already on his first day, Foster provided a tie-breaking vote to pass a major ethics reform bill."

Comment Re:And yet, a five-year study... (Score 1) 5

by buzzardsbay on Tuesday February 05, 2008 @10:49AM (#22306416) Attached to: E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections

That may well be true. But the study wasn't refuting the claim that there are security problems. The study refutes the premise in the original post that electronic voting undermines voter confidence. It does not. In fact, despite all its problems, it IMPROVES voter confidence. Reason? Places like Chicago and Boston and New Orleans have been proving for two centuries that paper ballot elections are quite easy to rig.

Submission + - PI License May Be Required for Computer Forensics (baselinemag.com)

Submitted by

buzzardsbay

on Friday January 04, 2008 @11:27AM

buzzardsbay writes: "The good folks over at Baseline Magazine have an intriguing — and worrisome — report on a movement to limit computer forensics work to those who have Private Investigators' licenses or those who work for licensed PI agencies. According to the story, pending legislation would limit the specialized task of probing deep into computer hard drives, network and server logs for telltale signs of hacking and data theft in the hands of the same people who advertise in the Yellow Pages for surveillance on cheating spouses, workers' compensation fraud and missing persons. Those caught practicing computer forensics without a license could face criminal prosecution, the story adds."

Submission + - New Hack Exploits Common Programming Error (techtarget.com)

Submitted by

buzzardsbay

on Monday July 23, 2007 @09:37AM

buzzardsbay writes: "TechTarget's security editor, Dennis Fisher is reporting that researchers at Watchfire Inc. have discovered a reliable method for exploiting a common programming error, which until now had been considered simply a quality problem and not a security vulnerability. According to the article, the researchers stumbled upon the method for remotely exploiting dangling pointers by chance while they were running the company's AppScan software against a Web server. The good folks at Watchfire will detail the technique in a presentation at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas in August, Fisher writes."

Submission + - Time to spike Microsoft's Patch Tuesday

Submitted by

buzzardsbay

on Thursday May 10, 2007 @11:13AM

buzzardsbay writes: "Techtarget's resident security curmudgeon, Dennis Fisher, is calling for an end to Microsoft's monthly security patching cycle. Fisher points out that 'a hacker only needs one unpatched system, one little crack in the fence in order to launch a major attack on a given network. The sheer volume of the patches Microsoft releases each month makes it quite difficult for even the most conscientious IT department to get every patch out to all of the affected systems in a reasonable amount of time.'"

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